Would you rather lose a pound next week or $500? Most people given the
choice would find it pretty easy to take off a pound. This simple insight
is the key to a seven-step plan, The $500 Diet, that can guide you to
sustained weight loss. Most diet books obsess about what you should put
in your mouth. But information is not the problem. You already know that
to lose weight you need to eat a bit less or exercise a bit more.
The $500 Diet is a different kind of diet plan, because it doesn’t
tell you how much to eat or exercise. You are smart enough—with
the help of the Internet and dozens of dieting books—to figure that
out. What’s unique about The $500 Diet is that it works on another
dimension. It lets you change your own incentives to lose weight. New
York Times best-selling author, Ian Ayres, tells you about his own struggles
with weight loss, and lays out advice for how you can use commitment contracts
to safely lose 10 percent of your body weight. You’ll learn about
his seven-step plan to a happier and lighter you. Most important, Ayres
tells you what you should do to keep it off. Most diet books are written
by physicians and scientists, but Ayres is a contract lawyer and an economist
who uses the tools of his crafts to help you change how much you want
to eat. If you are serious about losing weight, The $500 Diet provides
a simple tool that can help you commit to a healthier life. Kindle
Download. Free
iTunes Audio Download.

Could you finally update your will if you put $1,000 at risk? If you’ve
ever tried to meet a goal and came up short, the problem may not have
been that the goal was too difficult or that you lacked the discipline
to succeed. From giving up cigarettes to increasing your productivity
at work, you may simply have neglected to give yourself the proper incentives.

In Carrot and Sticks, Ian Ayres, the New York Times bestselling author
of Super Crunchers, applies the lessons learned from behavioral economics—the
fascinating new science of rewards and punishments—to introduce
readers to the concept of “commitment contracts”: an easy
but high-powered strategy for setting and achieving goals already in use
by successful companies and individuals across America. As co-founder
of the website stickK.com (where people have entered into their own “commitment
contracts” and collectively put more than $3 million on the line),
Ayres has developed contracts—including the one he honored with
himself to lose more than twenty pounds in one year—that have already
helped many find the best way to help themselves at work or home. Now
he reveals the strategies that can give you the impetus to meet your personal
and professional goals, including how to

Ayres shares engaging, often astounding, real-life stories that show the
carrot-and-stick principle in action, from the compulsive sneezer who
needed a “stick” (the potential loss of $50 per week to a
charity he didn’t like) to those who need a carrot with their stick
(the New York Times columnist who quit smoking by pledging a friend $5,000
per smoke . . . if she would do the same for him). You’ll learn
why you might want to hire a “professional nagger” whom you’ll
do anything to avoid—no, your spouse won’t do!—and how
you can “hand-tie” your future self to accomplish what you
want done now. You’ll find out how a New Zealand ad exec successfully
“sold his smoking addiction,” and why Zappos offered new employees
$2,000 to quit cigarettes.

Why
Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small
(Harvard Business School Press 2003) (with Barry
Nalebuff). Buy
a copy.
Also published in Portugese as "Você Pode Tudo" (Negocio
Editora), in Spanish as "¿Y por que NO" (Empresa Activa),
in Korean (Sejong), in Japanese (Hankyu), in Chinese (The Commercial Press),
in Bulgarian (Klasika and Still), in Chinese (China Times), in Estonian
(Tanapaev), in Italian (Il Sole), in Korean (Sejong Books), in Russian
(Williams Publishing), and in Thai (AR Business Press).